Former Citrus Valley High teacher Laura Whitehurst awaits a hearing in 2013 in Superior Court in San Bernardino. Laura Whitehurst was convicted of having sex with several students who attended the Redlands school. She had a baby with one of the students. (Photo by Kurt Miller, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Joshua Polo earned a visit to the vice principal’s office at Redlands High School when, in a heated squabble with English teacher Laura Whitehurst, he called her a “whore.”

It was 2007, five years before Whitehurst struck up a sexual relationship with a student that produced a daughter, unwelcome national headlines and a lasting black eye on the Redlands Unified School District.

When he met with Vice Principal Michael Munoz that day, Polo told him Whitehurst was having sex with students. He was in a position to know. His best friend was having an affair with the teacher, who was just 22 years old and in her first year teaching.

A view of the Redlands High School campus Wednesday July 3, 2013. (Staff file photo by Rick Sforza, Redlands Daily Facts/SCNG)

“They just kind of said yeah, okay, whatever. They just thought I was talking out my ass,” Polo said in a February 2016 deposition, included among nearly 1,900 pages of documents and more than 11 hours of recorded police interviews obtained by the Southern California News Group.

Attorneys representing former students in eight sex abuse lawsuits against the school district say the police reports, sworn depositions, internal documents and recordings support allegations of a more than decadelong cover-up of sex abuse at the school district.

In Polo’s case, he said Munoz did not acknowledge his allegation against Whitehurst and the subject was never discussed further with him.

The conversation would be among the earliest warning signs about Whitehurst, but certainly not the last. All went unreported by Redlands Unified for years, until the mother of the boy who fathered Whitehurst’s baby complained to then-Citrus High School Principal Bernie Cavanagh.

Not until that moment – on July 1, 2013 – did any Redlands Unified official or teacher alert authorities as required by California’s so-called mandated reporter law. Failure to report is a misdemeanor and carries a sentence of up to six months in jail.

Rumors, suspicions, missed opportunities

Cavanagh and Sabine Robertson-Phillips, assistant superintendent of human resources for the school district, told Redlands police detectives they were aware of rumors about an intimate relationship between Whitehurst and her student, but had no evidence to substantiate the claims.

“I can’t take a chance … of ruining (the victim’s life) or a teacher’s life for something that is just gossip,” Cavanagh told Detectives Natasha Crawford and Dominic Povero in a recorded interview. “If (Whitehurst) hadn’t got pregnant, we probably wouldn’t know about it.”

Almost immediately after learning about Whitehurst, Crawford and Povero were tasked with finding out what Redlands Unified officials knew about sex abuse of students and when they knew it. Or, more accurately under state law, what they suspected and when they suspected it.

According to California’s mandated reporter law, ” ‘reasonable suspicion’ does not require certainty that child abuse or neglect has occurred nor does it require a specific medical indication of child abuse or neglect; any ‘reasonable suspicion’ is sufficient.”

In short, Redlands Unified was obligated to alert police or child protective services if officials even had a whiff of something untoward.

Once the detectives tracked down other victims of Whitehurst, they quickly determined school officials had missed several opportunities to report Whitehurst to police, and that their interpretation of the mandated reporter law may be flawed.

School investigations went nowhere

Among the more notable warning signs was an episode during the fall and winter of the 2007-08 school year that landed Whitehurst and one of her male students before two school officials. Unlike the situation with Polo, this incident allegedly resulted in an official inquiry, according to police reports filed in the case.

Christina Rivera, then principal of Redlands High, and counselor Hilary Craw interviewed Whitehurst and her student separately amid swirling rumors of a suspected inappropriate relationship between the two. They denied being involved romantically, and the investigation ended there.

In their July 3, 2013, interviews with Povero and Crawford, both the student and Whitehurst acknowledged they had met with the school officials and denied anything inappropriate was occurring, then later agreed among themselves to be more discreet in their relationship.

But when the detectives interviewed Rivera three days later, she denied ever asking Whitehurst about an inappropriate relationship with her student. Rather, she told investigators, she merely had counseled the teacher on how to better manage her class and admonished her about driving a female student home.

“Rivera stated she would immediately report any teacher involved in any inappropriate relationship to law enforcement upon learning of the abuse,” Povero wrote in a report.

Later, Whitehurst and the student changed their stories.

When the detectives interviewed Whitehurst again three days later, the same day they interviewed Rivera, this time Whitehurst told the investigators the same thing Rivera told them — that Rivera had only counseled her on classroom management and admonished her for giving a female student a ride home.

And then, less than a few weeks later, the former Redlands High student changed his story as well, telling the detectives he couldn’t remember if Craw had asked him about an inappropriate relationship with Whitehurst. He said he only recalled the counselor talking to him about his performance in Whitehurst’s class, according to a police report.

Craw was out of state during the criminal investigation and the detectives could not contact her for an interview. In an April 8, 2016, deposition, however, Craw denied ever having discussed with the victim an inappropriate relationship with Whitehurst.

Povero and Crawford found other disturbing warning signs as well.

In one, they discovered Citrus Valley teacher Karen Alexander had written a letter to Cavanagh in May 2013 expressing her fears — and those of two other teachers — that Whitehurst and the boy who fathered her child might be involved in an inappropriate relationship.

She reported she and two students had seen the victim leaving Whitehurst’s classroom crying. Whitehurst’s door was locked, she said, and when Whitehurst opened it she appeared upset.

Alexander said she and the other two teachers had noticed Whitehurst and her student spending a lot of time together, had seen a change in demeanor for both of them and thought it was suspicious. In the letter, Alexander wrote of her “obligation as a mandated reporter to communicate my suspicions.”

In separate interviews with Cavanagh and Robertson-Phillips, Whitehurst and the boy denied they were involved romantically and — once again — the investigation ended there, according to police reports.

Parent claims district is ‘covering for Whitehurst’

Another warning sign led to a brief inquiry by the district, and another closed investigation, during the 2012-13 school year.

The mother of a Citrus Valley student had repeatedly complained to a counselor and school administrators about her daughter’s problems with Whitehurst throughout the year.

The girl reportedly had been asked to the homecoming dance by the boy who fathered Whitehurst’s child. Whitehurst, according to Povero, told the girl she should stay away from the boy because he was a bad influence and had a girlfriend whom he had gotten pregnant.

The girl broke off her homecoming date with the boy, leading to a heated confrontation during which the boy demanded to know what Whitehurst had told her. “(The victim) became angry and grabbed (the girl) by her shoulders, arm and hair and continued yelling at her,” Povero wrote in a report.

After the girl’s mother reported the incident to Vice Principal Wes Cullen, head of security Dan Kivett was asked to investigate. Kivett interviewed the boy, the girl, Whitehurst and a security officer who witnessed the incident. The boy and girl wished to remain friends, no abuse was determined to have occurred, and the investigation was closed.

Toward the end of the school year, the mother complained again to counselor Trish Scott that she was worried her daughter might get an unfair grade in Whitehurst’s class because Whitehurst was jealous and had become “preoccupied” with her victim. She accused Scott and the school of “covering for Whitehurst even though they all knew who the student was that is the father of Whitehurst’s child.”

‘Let the rumors begin … again!’

Whitehurst gave birth to her daughter on June 18, 2013. In fact, she was driven to the hospital by the student father of her baby. When a fellow teacher, Sarah Seevers, came to visit, she took a cellphone picture showing Whitehurst and her baby. Visible in the background were Whitehurst’s father, longtime Redlands Unified educator Dale Whitehurst, and the student.

Three days later, Seevers blasted the hospital room photo out via email to all school district staff, proclaiming “Welcome Baby Whitehurst!” Sixteen minutes after the email was sent, Cavanagh emailed Robertson-Phillips questioning why the student/victim was in the hospital with Whitehurst and why Seevers would send out the photo, according to a police report.

“Let the rumors begin . . . again!” Cavanagh said in his email to Robertson-Phillips.

Neither Cavanagh nor Robertson-Phillips followed up and questioned Whitehurst and her victim after the photo was sent out. Nor did they question Whitehurst’s father, himself a mandated reporter because he has been an educator with Redlands Unified for 35 years.

A month later, Citrus Valley water polo coach Chris Galloway told the detectives he had witnessed two students gossiping about who had fathered Whitehurst’s newborn baby. He told them “not to spread rumors.”

“He stated only upon substantial evidence would he ever be told to report directly to CPS,” Povero said in one of his reports.

And while California’s mandated reporter law requires only “reasonable suspicion” of abuse, school district officials felt they needed evidence of abuse before alerting law enforcement and child protective services.

The Redlands Unified School District paid a former high school student $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought against the district after former teacher Laura Whitehurst was convicted of having sex with him and other students. “While we are not pleased with this outcome, this agreement settles this tragic case once and for all so we can move forward,” said district spokesman Tom DeLapp. (Staff file photo by Rick Sforza, Redlands Daily Facts/SCNG)

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D.A. declines to prosecute anyone

Still, the District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute anyone for shirking their duties under the law.

Outgoing District Attorney Mike Ramos said Deputy District Attorney Melissa Rodriguez and a team of assistant and chief deputy district attorneys — including Chief Deputy Mary Ashley, a former crimes against children and family violence prosecutor — thoroughly reviewed the case before the office declined to file charges against Cavanagh, now the assistant superintendent of business services for the school district, and Robertson-Phillips.

“School officials appropriately conducted an investigation to determine if there was any substance to the rumors, at the conclusion of which, there appeared to be none,” the District Attorney’s Office said in an August 2013 statement.

Prosecutors determined that because no one had witnessed anything sexual between Whitehurst and her student, no law was broken. “Any suspicion that still existed did not rise to the level of ‘reasonable suspicion,’ ” according to the statement.

Ramos said Robertson-Phillips and Cavanagh had only rumors and circumstantial evidence of a relationship to go on.

“We did a thorough investigation, and after reviewing all of those factors, we did not believe that we could prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that these two individuals failed in mandatory reporting,” he said.

In an interview at his office, Ramos bristled at any suggestion that his former position as a Redlands Unified School District board member and his wife’s employment in the district influenced his decision. He served on the Redlands school board from 1995 to 2002 before taking office as district attorney. His wife has worked as a part-time secretary in the superintendent’s office since September 2006, district spokeswoman MaryRone Shell said.

Ramos said his son and daughter both attended Redlands East Valley High School, his grandson attends school in the district, and his granddaughter also will be attending school there.

“You think I want child molesters on those campuses? Hell no!” Ramos said. “I would never protect anybody like that.”

Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.

Scott Schwebke is an investigative reporter for the Register and the Southern California News Group. A native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., he was previously a breaking news and multimedia reporter for the Ogden, Utah, Standard-Examiner. Scott has also worked at newspapers in Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. A graduate of Brigham Young University, Scott is the Register's 2014 Beat Reporter of the Year. He has won more than two dozen journalism awards including the N.C. Associated Press News Council’s O. Henry Award for a lengthy narrative on the brutal home invasion slaying of a nurse and a Katie Award from the Dallas Press Club for a feature story on a UFO investigator. Scott has covered everything from methamphetamine trafficking cops to hurricanes and has accompanied police on undercover drug buys. He also provided an award winning, eyewitness account of the execution of a North Carolina death row inmate and obtained an exclusive interview with the ringleader of a brazen escape from the Orange County Jail involving three maximum security inmates. Scott was also part of the Register’s investigative team that produced the year-long, award winning Rehab Riviera series, examining problems in Southern California’s drug rehabilitation industry. Having spent two years living in England including Liverpool, he is an avid Beatles fan and memorabilia collector. He and his wife, Lisa, reside in Anaheim.